Ok people here is a question for you: are there any blind people out there using hubitat? The reason I ask is I am blind and am using a screen reading package called jaws. I have run into a few issues and I am interested to find out if anyone else is blind and was able to figure a way around these issues.
I’m not a beginner; I started off with x10 moved to Wink and finally moved to SmartThings (until they started breaking things). Now I have moved to hubitat and I love the flexibility and control.
My issues are so far directly related to the rule machine. The dropdowns aren’t doing anything when I use the jaws command to click on them. If I have someone sighted click on them for me the dropdown works where I can see all the options but I am unable to select one.
Based on my experience I am guessing these aren’t standard html dropdowns and jaws seems to have problems with that.
Any help anyone can give me would be great.
Rio
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Welcome to the group @massageinlargo.
Tagging the RM master @bravenel, maybe he can provide some insight.
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Hi Rio,
IMy daughter is blind and a Jaws user, but she is not a Hubitat user.
We will look into the dropdown issue.
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We think we can fix the dropdowns to make them Jaws friendly. This would be an option to be set for the ui, as it will probably not look so great, but be functional for you as a Jaws user. This would be a new feature in our next major update, 2.2.6.
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i must say, i do love how quickly you guys are able to help the community with most things we throw at you. i already loved the platform and the community, but this has just increased that love even more. keep on being amazing
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I am what most people would consider a power user of Jaws. I have taken the course directly from Freedom Scientific for Jaws scripting. I am also a contractor for New York State and the state of Florida doing workplace adaptive accommodations. Being a programmer and IT tech myself I have a unique insight into what works and what doesn’t. Normally when there is a way around getting something to work I can find it; however, there are some cases where the program just isn’t useable by a jaws user without major changes to the program.
I have found a few different areas of the Hubitat UI that there are issues with working with Jaws; however, I have come up with workarounds. I am in the process of documenting them and writing a custom Jaws script to make it work. I will be posting it once I have had time to fully go through the interface. Right now I am kind of at an impasse with the dropdowns. I totally understand why programmers draw their own controls because I have done it myself; unfortunately, screen reading software most of the time has issues with it. For example I have had an issue working with the ST Groovy ID since the beginning. I do allot with custom handlers and have found no workaround with their interface. The only way I can save the code is to have a sighted friend click on the save button for me. I have posted in the forums and contacted tech support with little to no response. Then when they started taking away features and breaking things on a regular bases I knew it was time to leave.
I would like to thank the community for such a positive response and also the staff of Hubitat for their willingness to make adaptions to the interface to make it friendly to blind or visually impaired individuals. I have dealt with other companies in the past and it is like pulling teeth to get them to make even a simple change. In this particular case I just posted to the community and got a same day response from the developers on how they would be willing to make it work. That to me is worth more than anything having a developer stand behind their product and take direct feedback from the end users.
Rio
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Here's a great example of why I'm so happy I switched to Hubitat @bravenel , from other home automation platforms. I'm not affected by this particular issue at all, but a member of the user community pointed out a reasonable need and opportunity for improvement, and you folks jumped right on it, with a commitment to include it in the next major release. Bravo!
Far too many of your competitors won't commit to addressing user interface issues at all, for any reason, while you folks are willing to do so for a wide variety of users. Excellent work. Very happy I found Hubitat.
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We would certainly like to see what you come up with. You can always send me a PM here...
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